


Put a Photograph Inside the Frame of My Heart

by summerstorm



Category: Castle
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-10
Updated: 2010-12-10
Packaged: 2017-10-13 14:41:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/138488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/summerstorm/pseuds/summerstorm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kate wouldn't say her bad days are worse than other people's, because that's absurd, that's something Castle would say for dramatic effect, but they seem to be—different. Yeah. Different.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Put a Photograph Inside the Frame of My Heart

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Diane Birch. Written for forthesky, who requested Beckett-centric fic set to the prompt "bad things to such good people."

The whole day after her mother dies is a bad omen. It's one bad omen after another, even. Kate oversleeps, gets up still groggy, and slips in the shower, hitting her thigh in a way she knows is going to bruise. Majorly. She's going through a phase—though, in retrospect, maybe that's just who she is—where she thinks bruises are cool, like war wounds, so she tries to shower through the pain and the knowledge that her thigh is going to look disgusting in about a day.

She tries not to think about the fact that she hasn't seen her mom since last night. She must have gotten in late, after Kate was asleep, and gone to work early. Her dad's gone, too, but her mom's coffee mug is in the sink and her coat's not on the rack in the hall, so—late night. Kate's used to not seeing her parents before she leaves in the morning. She's not used to not seeing them before she goes to sleep, but honestly, she thinks, she _actually thinks this_ , what's the worst that could've happened? Her mom could have fallen asleep at the office. She definitely seemed to be working hard enough.

Later, after she blows her hair dry in the bathroom, she realizes it's still a little damp around the bottom, so she plugs the dryer in her room and sparks burst out of the socket and the smell of something burning takes over her nose and her space and her clothes.

In retrospect, that last part is probably not true, but it seems true enough at the time, so Kate ends up changing into an outfit she doesn't feel like wearing at all. She can't decide what the worst part is: the light gray leather jacket—much less fitting to her mood than the black—or the flash of pink over the waistband of her jeans from the only pair of panties she was able to find before she had to leave for school.

School is even worse: she nearly falls asleep at least three times, and then she gets caught trying to cut Calculus, which is ridiculous, because it is the one time she cuts a class because she genuinely thinks it will do her more harm than good to attend. Really, the material will just confuse her now; if she goes through it later when she's less out of it, she knows she'll grasp it better.

Needless to say, none of that holds a candle to the moment she's told her mother's been murdered.

It does make it that bit harder to swallow, though, knowing that, while Kate was complaining about chores and laundry and trying to get her hair to behave, her mother was lying dead somewhere, incapable of doing any of those things, of even _feeling_ her scalp.

She breaks the socket in her room for good, hitting her dryer against it, and it's not even that, as the guidance counselor at school tries to put it when she talks to him, she went into anger first. She wasn't angry. She was guilty, and trying to make it go away. Violence helped with that. Riding her bike helped with that.

Kate doesn't hit anger as such until the police stop asking her questions, until she realizes they're about to give up.

*

The funny thing is, for a meaning of the word 'funny' that leans more towards 'sad,' the day she shoots Dick Coonan, she wakes up feeling great, and gets through several hours feeling great. Investigating him doesn't pull her back into that place she was in by the time she let go of her mother's murder investigation, that place where she obsessed over details she'd gone over multiple times, that place where she went to bed feeling completely useless, where, after enough time passed, she woke up feeling like there was nothing she could do after all, even if she tried again anyway. Instead of that, having a suspect, even if she doesn't have him by the ears yet, gives her a sense of purpose she hadn't felt in a while. She's lucky to have a job where that sense of purpose hardly ever wavers, where she knows what she's doing will help someone somehow, but the sense of purpose the Coonan case provides her with is almost teenage in its optimism, whatever the opposite of pragmatic is.

It lasts up until she realizes Coonan's the one who killed her mother—up until she loses the chance to find out who ordered the hit.

The rest of the day still goes smoothly, which is almost cruel, given everything. It's one of the worst days of her life, but every time she thinks, _There's no way this day could get any worse_ , she realizes it could. In so many ways. It's not just leftover guilt from the day she assumed nothing bad could possibly have happened to her mom; it's the fact that she knows more now than she used to, that so many people did so much to help her without her even needing to ask. The extremes everyone went for her—it's something her mom would have done, and Kate doesn't know whether she wants to smile or punch something.

Kate wouldn't say her bad days are worse than other people's, because that's absurd, that's something Castle would say for dramatic effect, but they seem to be—different. Yeah. Different.

"Different how?" Castle asks. She's not sure why they're having this conversation. He just showed up at her apartment when she'd already changed into her pajamas. He was carrying this steaming cup of amazing-smelling tea and she thought, well, maybe that would help her get into the right headspace to have a decent night's sleep. She knew there was no way she'd rest if she just went to bed, not in the mood she was in.

"Just different," Kate says, shrugging lightly. Like limbo, she wants to say. Halfway between good and awful. Harder to handle than if they were just bad. Truth is, she doesn't know it's possible for her to have as bad a day as the day she found out her mother died. It's a very low baseline. It's not a good thing.

It's just different.

*

Living out of hotels and friends' generosity is an interesting experience. Kate hasn't had to go apartment-hunting in years, and she forgot how much she hates it. Finding her old apartment took her three months of realtors and waiting for staging and waiting for fixes and looking at a larger number of places than she usually sets foot on during a murder investigation.

Alexis eyes her over her cup of cocoa—Kate thought spending the night at Castle's would mean having breakfast with Castle, but somehow Kate always ends up in the kitchen alone with Alexis and occasionally Martha while Castle does whatever it is he does in his studio. Which is fine—Alexis makes for good company. They're probably better company than Castle, and easier to handle before caffeine. Still, it makes Kate feel that extra bit more like she's imposing. Invading.

"Are you going apartment-hunting today?" Alexis asks as Kate takes a seat.

"I'm looking at a couple of places later, yeah," Kate says.

"Not that I mind having you here," Alexis amends quickly. "You can stay as long as you want."

"Did you go over that line with your dad?"

Alexis suppresses a smile, but her dimples give her away. "Maybe," she offers, and takes a sip of her cocoa. "Is there anything you actually like on the schedule?"

"I—honestly don't know," Kate says.

Kate thinks she should feel uprooted, having to live in different places until she finds one of her own. She feels like every day should be frustrating, not having so much of the stuff she normally used on a daily basis around, raiding other people's fridges and everything. Sometimes she does feel exposed, which is why she usually goes for hotels; Kate doesn't really have a problem sleeping in the middle of someone's living room or going down for breakfast in nightwear and a robe, but there's something about people being around during her morning routine that makes her feel uncomfortable.

It's still not that bad. She even wishes it were worse, so she'd have more of a reason to rush her apartment search, but then again, like Martha put it a couple of days after Kate's apartment burned down, it's better to live out of a bag than live in a dirty closet.

"And we have plenty of space for your bag here," Castle said on his way across the living room after Martha said that. Kate looked back at him—she'd been skimming through the paper in the kitchen—and let herself smile a little.

Martha looked at her, eyebrows rising as she grinned, and Kate stopped.

But that's the thing. People won't _let_ her feel uprooted. It's a little annoying, but mostly it's comforting. Even when she misses having a place of her own, and even though she hardly ever takes it, she has a choice to spend the night somewhere not a hotel, somewhere lived-in, somewhere she feels _welcome_.

She could do a lot worse.


End file.
